Porirua City Council has become the first New Zealand council to go live with Datacom’s cloud-based council and community application, Datascape.
It follows to the Shire of Manjimup in Western Australia becoming the first Datascape customer in late 2018.
Porirua City will initially implement the Online Services module of Datascape. Datacom says it will provide visibility of applications for building permits from submission to issuing the permit.
Implementation of the Online Services module will be followed by Datascape’s Finance, Property and Rating, and Customer Request Management Services modules. These, Datacom says, will provide the community with continued self-service and with online and intuitive ways to make payment using the New Zealand’s new open banking standards, as well as debit and credit card payments.
Datacom says Porirua will eventually roll out the full Datascape suite, and it expects it will be the first council in New Zealand to do so.
Porirua City Council’s general manager corporate services/CFO Roy Baker said the council had been working for two years to become more customer-focussed, starting with the launch of the council’s various websites.
“We will be using Datascape and Antenno [a mobile app that enables councils to communicate with the community] to move our systems and interactions with customers to a new level,” he said.
“Online Services, particularly for building and resource consents, will address key issues for us, and Datascape’s functionality in these and other areas has meant we will be able to provide these services in a timeframe that was not possible with other approaches we considered.”
He added: “Antenno’s go live was seamless and we’re already getting great feedback from our customers and staff.”
Datacom says the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system at the heart of Datascape, will provide a far more complete view of the customer, enabling better service.